This webinar will focus on the immigration portion of a Special Immigrant Juvenile Status case. We will cover updates on USCIS adjudications of SIJ petitions and SIJ-based applications for adjustment of status, including recent trends in RFEs, NOIDs, and denials in SIJS cases. We’ll also share strategies for successfully submitting the I-360 application to U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services, and discuss common admissibility issues that arise in SIJS cases.

Presenters:

Angie Junck, ILRC Supervising Attorney

Angie is a supervising attorney at the ILRC. She joined the ILRC in 2005 as a New Voices fellow. She specializes in the immigration consequences of crime and delinquency, immigration enforcement, and immigrant youth issues. She is a co-author of several ILRC publications including, Defending Immigrants in the Ninth Circuit: The Impact of Crimes under California and Other State Laws, Remedies and Strategies for Permanent Resident Clients, and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status and Other Immigration Options for Children & Youth. She helps coordinate two national collaboratives that address the intersection of the immigration and criminal justice systems—the Defending Immigrants Project, a collaborative devoted to protecting the rights of immigrants accused of crimes by providing advocacy and support within the criminal justice system and the Immigrant Justice Network, a collaborative to eliminate unjust immigration penalties for immigrants and end the criminalization of immigrant communities. She sits on the American Bar Association's Immigration Commission and is the co-chair of the Immigration Committee of the ABA's Criminal Justice Section. Prior to joining the ILRC, she worked on post-conviction relief for immigrants at the Law Offices of Norton Tooby and advocated on behalf of incarcerated survivors of domestic violence as the co-coordinator of Free Battered Women and a member of the Habeas Project. She is a proficient Spanish speaker.

Aryah Somers, Advocacy Director - Kids in Need of Defense

Before joining KIND, Aryah was a consultant on immigrant and refugee children’s rights. She is co-author of UNHCR’s “Children on the Run” report on the root causes of migration of unaccompanied children from Central America and Mexico to the U.S. She recently wrote two practice advisories on Child Capacity and Mental Competency in Immigration Proceedings for the Vera Institute of Justice. In 2012, as a Fulbright Scholar in Guatemala, she researched the repatriation and reintegration of children deported from the United States to Guatemala. She has also represented children in removal proceedings and family court in New York as a KIND Fellow at The Door and at the Florence Project in Arizona. She has also worked with refugee children abroad as a consultant for UNHCR/Ecuador on best interests determinations for refugee children and for AMERA in Egypt as a legal representative for unaccompanied refugee children. Aryah holds a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center (2002), M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown University (1999), and a B.A. in International Affairs from George Washington University (1997). She has published various law journal articles on unaccompanied and separated children.

Rachel Prandini, ILRC Unaccompanied Minor Law Fellow

Rachel joined the ILRC in 2014 to focus on the growing need for legal representation for the unaccompanied minor population. Prior to the ILRC, she represented detained and released unaccompanied minors in removal defense and led a project focusing on Special Immigrant Juvenile Status at Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project in Los Angeles. While at Esperanza, Rachel also performed "Know Your Rights" work in southern California immigration detention centers for minors. Prior to joining Esperanza, Rachel worked as an associate at Paul Hastings, LLP and volunteered as a Child Advocate for unaccompanied minors. Rachel is a graduate of UC Davis School of Law, where she was a member of the Immigration Law Clinic and was fortunate to work on complex deportation defense cases and detention issues. Rachel is conversant in Spanish.